Despite the onset of the “electronic age,” there is still significant demand for print products. Indeed, commercial print often may have annual retail sales totaling more than $700 billion. Print service providers (PSPs) fulfill the demand for print products by printing a vast array of print products, such as photographs and brochures, school course materials, periodicals and books, and advertisements and product packaging.
Processing a print job may involve four stages of production: pre-press, press, post-press, and shipping. The PSP may determine a workflow to complete the print job using various print machines on its production floor. Some of these print machines may be digitally connected to a workflow controller. Communication between digitally connected print machines and the workflow controller may take place using a printing standard, such as job messaging format (JMF) and/or job definition format (JDF).
Large numbers of other print machines still used by a PSP may not be connected to the workflow controller, thereby falling in a “digital dead-zone.” For this reason, PSPs may print a job ticket at the outset of print production detailing all the steps needed to complete the print job. This approach works most of the time, but a scheduling nightmare can result when a print machine breaks or when certain parts of the job take longer than expected. In this stressful environment, a floor manager may have to make on-the-fly decisions to keep smooth print production on the PSP floor. However, these on-the-fly decisions could affect the next batch of print jobs entering the process, and workflows determined by the workflow controller may not accurately reflect the actual situation on the print production floor.